About Guides
Welcome to our Guides section—your go-to resource for structured information, practical instructions, and expert recommendations on key aspects of community schools. Whether you’re looking to deepen your knowledge or take actionable steps, these guides are designed to support your journey every step of the way.
Principal Guidebook
What does it mean to be a Principal at a Community School? The Principal Guidebook: For California Community Schools offers a practical overview of the leadership vision and core responsibilities associated with leading a Community School. Grounded in the California Community Schools framework, the guide highlights how principals play a critical role in advancing shared leadership, strengthening partnerships, and aligning school improvement efforts with the community’s needs and assets. It emphasizes a shift from traditional top-down leadership toward collaborative leadership with educators, families, students, and community partners. The guide breaks down the five capacity-building strategies for school leaders. It also provides reflective questions and leadership practices that help principals integrate whole-child supports with strong instructional leadership. Designed as a quick reference tool, the document includes links to video interviews with principals and an appendix full of useful resources.
Serving the Whole Person: An Alignment and Coherence Guide for State Education Agencies
This Alignment and Coherence Guide’s central purpose is to help state education agency (SEA) leaders implement conditions for equitable learning and development for students, families, and educators, through their work to improve the alignment and coherence of their whole-person initiatives.
Forum Guide to Data Visualization A Resource for Education Agencies
The purpose of this document is to recommend data visualization practices that will help education agencies communicate data meaning in visual formats that are accessible, accurate, and actionable for a wide range of education partners.
National School Reform Faculty: Data Analysis Protocol
Discussions around data can make people feel “on the spot” or exposed, either for themselves, their students, or their profession. The use of a structured dialogue format provides an effective technique for managing the discussion and maintaining its focus. This protocol allows participants to look at data with new eyes, and ends with possible implications, next steps, and strategies.
Deep Needs and Assets Assessment
Transformational Community Schools build their work by always: seeing the system; building goals from a root cause analysis; developing their efforts both inside and outside the school building; working at the pace of relationships; and authentically centering equity and racial justice. Central to this effort is a Needs and Assets Assessment (NAA) reflecting these practices.
Transformational Needs and Assets Assessment
Transformational Community Schools build their work by always: seeing the system, building goals from a root cause analysis, developing their efforts both inside and outside the school building, working at the pace of relationships, and authentically centering equity and racial justice.
UCLA Community School: Celebrating Language and Culture
Language and culture are central to learning and human development, as they shape the ways in which we all learn and grow together. Individuals learn as members of a community that values their participation and is respectful, productive, and inclusive.
Community-Based Learning Guide
Community-based learning draws from the cultural wealth, funds of knowledge, and indigenous ways of knowing of students, families, and educators to cultivate responsive classrooms that foster a deep sense of belonging.
Equity in Student-Centered Learning Design
This guide is designed to help you and your team collaboratively design and implement learning that equitably honors the unique assets and needs of your students.
Using Performance Assessments to Support Student Learning: How District Initiatives Can Make a Difference
In this study, we investigated how districts and schools can build systems and structures for developing and implementing performance assessment initiatives across multiple sites.
NEA: Community Schools Strategy, School Level Implementation
This one-page roadmap outlines the school-level implementation of the community schools strategy, providing interest holders with a clear overview of the process at the site level.